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The AIH Transcript for March 20, 2020

Hosts: Carol Off and Chris Howden

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello. I'm Carol Off.

CHRIS HOWDEN: Good evening. I'm Chris Howden. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

CH: Tonight:

CO: Positives and negatives. Francois Philippe Champagne is out of isolation after getting the all clear for COVID-19. We asked the foreign affairs minister where Canada stands in the international fight.

CH: While one Republican senator was calming Americans about the economic impact of the coming pandemic, it seems he was also selling his own investments before the market crash. Now he's got some explaining to do.

CO: A free ride and maybe some free publicity too. Sunwing airlines has a message for stranded Canadians, if there are extra seats on our flights we'll fly you home for free.

CH: We love to laugh, you love to laugh. But can you make it in the bigs? We reach into the As It Happens archive to find our interview with a woman who is serious about competitive laughing.

CO: Elements of style. After a provincial chief medical officer wears a dress adorned with the periodic table during a televised coronavirus update, a designer is inundated with orders, and that's helping to keep her staff working.

CH: And stepping up and up and up. With galas and charity runs cancelled, fundraising is facing its own COVID-19 challenges. But one thing you can still do is climb 42 flights of stairs 55 times. Our guest takes a brief break from doing just that to try to explain why you would want to. As It Happens. The Friday Edition. Radio that appreciates a sense of purpose.

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Part 1: COVID-19: François-Philippe Champagne

COVID-19: François-Philippe Champagne

Guest: François-Philippe Champagne

CH: Francois Philippe Champagne is out of isolation this morning, Canada's foreign affairs minister announced that he had tested negative for COVID-19. But with Canada and the rest of the world grappling with a global pandemic, Minister Champagne didn't have much time for celebration. We reached Francois Philippe Champagne on the drive from his home riding in Quebec back to Ottawa.

CO: Minister Champagne, we know that you were being tested for COVID-19. How is your health?

FRANÇOIS PHILIPPE CHAMPAGNE: Things are going very fine. Thank you for asking. I mean, if I came back from Europe. I had mild symptoms but I thought an abundance of caution that was the right thing to do. And on the other end, because it did not allow me to move much, I could work more. So I think at the end of the day, Canadians were well served with that because I could manage all the issues we have to deal with: to repatriate the thousands of Canadians who obviously want to come back.

CO: That's what you're dealing with. You're both at home and back at work. You never stopped working. You've got tens of thousands of people out there trying to get home. Are you ready to deal with that?

FRANÇOIS PHILIPPE CHAMPAGNE: Well, listen this is the largest consular operation in Canada's history, I think. So everyone is working. It gives you a sense of perspective. Yesterday we got about -- in the last 48 hours, the team got about 10000 calls. We receive about 14000 emails. So I would say the whole global affairs team is really now a consular service team. You know, the complexity we're living is that air service is greatly diminishing. If you add to that the complexity of having border closure, airspace closure, airport closures, this is really like a chess game where we're trying to offer safe passage and facilitate the return of Canadians. We're facing these different barriers and things happen so quickly that we always have to be on the watch almost 24 hours.

CO: So many things are unprecedented at this point. Tonight you're closing the border with the United States for people -- not for Canadians who are coming home, but for others. We're closing Canada to countries around the world. This seems like a very un-Canadian thing to do. What lasting impact is this going to have on a country that's built on openness?

FRANÇOIS PHILIPPE CHAMPAGNE: I think what we had to do was to protect the health and safety of Canadians. We're basing that on science and advice by health professionals. Look at what's going on around the world. It's so unprecedented that I think if you look at the number of cases we have across Canada, I would say the measures that we implemented early on have protected all Canadians. And now as things are moving, yes, we need to do things that we would not have imagined necessarily a month ago. And I think Canadians understand that in times like that, the best thing that a government can do for them is to ensure their health and safety. And that's what we're doing.

CO: We know that the virus needs to be contained. But the economic crises we are having for many needs a global effort. We had Ian Goldin, the former World Bank V.P., on the show last night. He was describing how in 2008, the financial crisis -- George Bush picked up the phone, he called China, he called the world, people called each other. The only way we got out of that crisis was a global effort. But now we're seeing people -- the tendency is to look inward. The nationalism, the walls are going up. Where is the leadership needed to pull the G-20 together to do what happened in 2008?

FRANÇOIS PHILIPPE CHAMPAGNE: Well, Canada certainly did its part. I mean, there was a G7 leaders call and Prime Minister Trudeau was there and was one of those who said we need that. I have been convening about a voluntary group of about 10 countries of the G-20. We had already our second call. And this was really out of personal leadership. This is Canada leading around the world.

CO: We're seeing a president in the United States, who has none of these tendencies. He is not looking outside. He's looking inside. So is Canada prepared to play a major role in trying to bring countries together as we get out of the economic mess that we're in?

FRANÇOIS PHILIPPE CHAMPAGNE: Well, the prime minister certainly has been doing his part. I think at the G7, he was one of those who said we need to do more of that. Let me give you a practical example. In the last call I had with a number of countries, we realized that one of the hotspots we have in order to facilitate the return of Canadians is, for example, Peru and Morocco. Now, it was interesting to learn that this is exactly the same thing for France, for Germany, for the United Kingdom, for Brazil. So we said, well, we might as well work together. Turkey had offered. They say, well, we have Turkish Airlines, they can bring people on board. So this is the way we're trying to do in times, like you said, which are very old precedent that. We have been doing. The prime minister has been doing this for. I've been doing my part to try to nudge countries to talk more to each other, to coordinate because when you see that air travel is trickling down at a speed which we've never seen before. We need these aerial bridges between North America and Europe and Asia and Latin America. So a lot of those things are happening in the background, but they will make a difference in the lives of Canadians.

CO: Just want to ask you finally, because it's really quite extraordinary, again, that the prime minister has said that the government might be recalled briefly in order to pass emergency measures, including the Federal Emergencies Act. This is quite an extraordinary move. How likely is it that something like that might happen in the days to come?

FRANÇOIS PHILIPPE CHAMPAGNE: I will say we'll see. You know, we're living in unprecedented times. And that piece of legislation was passed by parliament at the time for very unusual, exceptional, unprecedented circumstances. I would argue that we are in one of those. So we are looking at the powers we have to make sure that we can deliver for Canadians, both economically from the health perspective, from the security perspective. But I think people who are listening to us would say it would be prudent to look at all the options to make sure that the government can react quickly and appropriately and with a sense of measure to all these challenges that are presented to us very quickly and that no one could really foresee even a month ago.

CO: So just very quickly, this could mean the suspension of the movement of people, shutting things down, ordering people to stay home, being able to basically within I guess the Charter of Rights and Freedoms do anything they feel -- the government -- feels it has to do.

FRANÇOIS PHILIPPE CHAMPAGNE: We're not there yet. It's prudent for us to look at all the options to make sure it would have all the tools to respond to the emergency that is presented in front of us. I think people who are listening to us understand that at this time they'd rather see a proactive government and making sure that we have all the tools at their disposal to protect their health and safety and also to make sure that we protect our economy, their livelihood, their families, their children and their neighbours.

CO: Minister Champagne we're going to leave it there. And I appreciate speaking with you tonight. Thank you.

FRANÇOIS PHILIPPE CHAMPAGNE: Thank you very much. Real pleasure talking to you.

CH: François Philippe Champagne is Canada's foreign affairs minister. We reached him on the road driving back to Ottawa from Trois-Riviere, Quebec.

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Sunwing repatriation

Guest: Mark Williams

CH: For the thousands of Canadians still stranded around the world, getting home has been no easy feat. Some country's borders are closed. Some flights are cancelled. And according to a lot of would be travellers, some airlines are jacking up their prices. Sunwing Airlines thinks it has a solution for its customers in vacation destinations. For any stranded Canadians, regardless of airline, Sunwing is offering up free seats home if there's extra room on the plane. Mark Williams is the president of Sunwing Airlines. He's been involved in coordinating the flights. We reached him in Toronto.

CO: Mr. Williams, I imagine that March is your very busiest month for Sunwing. So does this year just kind of take the cake?

MARK WILLIAMS: Well, I've been in this industry for well over 30 years and clearly never seen anything like this before. It's been tough all around for passengers and crew and for everyone in the industry. There's a lot of uncertainty.

CO: All right. A lot of uncertainty for passengers right now, which is where you have offered to take stranded Canadians who are trying to get home. And even if they're not booked to fly with Sunwing, you've offered to get them home. How is that going to work?

MW: The prime minister came out the other night, talked about Canadians being stranded. I don't like to hear that. And neither does anyone else at Sunwing. So we've been doing repatriation flights since the 16th of March. We're continuing those until the 23rd. We had over 75000 of our own customers in destination and we want to bring them all home. As we start to wind down the programs and there's empty seats, we just thought why wouldn't we offer those empty seats to people in destinations that have no other way to get home?

CO: Are you charging for those?

MW: No, we're not.

CO: When you say repatriation flights, what do you mean by that?

MW: We have, as I said, over 75000 people in destinations as of Monday last week. We're no longer flying people south. So we're flying empty flights down to the Caribbean and Mexico and then we're bringing a full planeload of people back to Canada.

CO: So these are people coming back. This is not the end of their vacation or what they were planning. You're just bringing them back.

MW: Well we're doing both. Many of these customers are actually just at the end of their one week vacation. We've also now had inquiries for people who want to leave early. And we've been trying to accommodate them as well on our flights.

CO: So what effect did it have on you when the prime minister said to people, to Canadians, if you are abroad come home while you still can?

MW: The first thing is a travel ban meant that for our business, it's pretty much grinding to a halt. Right now, we're going to have to suspend our operations. And so then our focus became really just on how do we bring everyone home.

CO: So you're bringing tens of thousands of Sunwing customers home. You are going to offer any extra seats on those planes for people who just want to get home and don't have another way. But realistically, how many empty seats are you likely to have?

MW: Well, I wish I could answer that question. It's difficult for us to know. There's been so much going on and people moving to earlier flights that I don't have an accurate count of how many seats we have available. But generally, we have three or four or five empty seats on a flight. And what we're asking people to do, because our phone lines have been inundated with people already trying to change their travel plans, to go to our website. You can look at our schedule. If you're in a destination and you see we have a flight from your area to go to the airport three hours in advance to standby. And once we've got all the Sunwing customers on the plane and if we have empty seats, then they just have to show us your Canadian passport and we'll bring them home.

CO: Okay. But you also have obligations to check their health, right? How does that work?

MW: There's a questionnaire that we have to ask all customers and have them answered before they're allowed to get on the flight. That's the government's way and ours to ensure that everyone who is getting on the plane are healthy. And so they're not potentially infecting other people.

CO: We're hearing a lot of stories -- it's anecdotal -- but lots of people talking about how they have been some place, tried to get home, and the airlines charge them some astronomical price in order to get a seat. Air Canada has been criticized for gouging people. That's the word people are using for stranded Canadians. I mean, they're trying to survive. The airlines are trying to survive. So why don't you charge people for these seats?

MW: We thought about it and we just thought in a time of a crisis like this, the Canadian thing to do is to ask people if they're available to come to the airport and we bring them home for free. We just felt that it was good for the country right now to do that.

CO: You're getting a lot of praise for this today. But other frustrated Sunwing customers out there whose upcoming vacation packages have been cancelled, they want a refund and you're giving them vouchers to rebook their trips. So can you refund those customers?

MW: Right now, our focus has really been on the repatriation. But, you know, I asked people to be patient. Let us get through this next part of this crisis, which is to bring people home. We are at this point holding on to people's money for their trips and offering them a future trip. Our flights are nonrefundable. And, you know, we're looking for a way to offer someone a trip in, you know, a year or two down the road when everything is back to normal again.

CO: The prime minister has promised to put forward a plan to help the airline industry. What are you looking to see in that plan?

MW: It's an industry wide issue. It's not just a Canadian issue. It's a global one for airlines. Pretty much every airline around the world is either temporarily suspending operations or drastically cutting them back. That creates a cash issue for the industry. I think that the government should look at some kind of a support package, loans, or subsidies to help the airlines through this. Clearly when this is over, the whole world needs an aviation industry that's still working.

CO: Can Sunwing Airlines survive this?

MW: Oh, absolutely. We're very confident that we have a good plan going forward. We've been in discussions with the government and our bankers around ensuring that we've got liquidity. We have to take the difficult decision to lay off a bunch of our staff. I'm certainly hoping that with all the government programs in place, that everyone will be able to get through this. But we needed to take those steps to make sure that we would be here on the other end when this is all over.

CO: All right. When this is all over, it sounds like a very encouraging idea. Mr. Williams, thank you.

MW: Appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

CH: Mark Williams is the president of Sunwing Airlines. We reached him in Toronto.

[Music]

Look through the window

CH: All over the country, seniors homes are restricting visitors to protect the residents from COVID-19. But that didn't stop Evangeline Payne's family from their weekly visit. They just got a bit more creative. Evangeline Payne lives at a home in Corner Brook, Newfoundland. This week, since her granddaughter Julie Seaborn and 70 year old great granddaughter Emma Seaborn weren't allowed through the front door of her building, they went to her window. All three spoke with CBC Corner Brook's, Bernice Hillier, starting with Ms. Payne's granddaughter, Julie.

[sc]

JULIE SEABORN: We stopped outside her window and gave her a call. And she looked out the window and Emma went up to the window. And we stayed on the phone and chatted with her for a little bit, for a little visit. And then we came on again. But it was very nice.

BERNICE HILLIER: Evangeline, what did you think when Julie called you and she said she was outside your window for a visit?

EVANGELINE PAYNE: I said oh my, nanny opened her curtains. And when I looked, she was standing by the window kissing her hand and waving to me and putting her hand on the window and kissing her hand.

BERNICE HILLIER: Emma, what was it like visiting your great grandmother through the window?

EMMA SEABORN: I miss being able to have hugs and stuff.

BERNICE HILLIER: You couldn't do that this time, right?

EMMA SEABORN: Nope.

BERNICE HILLIER: Evangeline, what was it like for you having to visit through a window instead of having them in the room with you?

EVANGELINE PAYNE: Oh, it hurts you know to see my two grandchildren outside waving to me and throwing kisses to me. But we've got to go along with those things.

BERNICE HILLIER: You must be so glad to see them come.

EVANGELINE PAYNE: Oh, my dear. I got twenty eight grandchildren and great grandchildren, and I love every one of them.

BERNICE HILLIER: Julie, what are you going to do from here on now to make sure that you can keep your grandmother company as much as possible?

JULIE SEABORN: Oh, I'll continue these visits. I mean, we don't have anything else to do. [Chuckles] So you had me in tears here, actually. We'll continue these visits. I mean, this afternoon -- or this morning, we had a half an hour on face time, thanks to the people at Mountain View. If I can help it, I'll be there, you know, anytime that we have some time to be there.

BERNICE HILLIER: Emma, do you have anything you want to say to great nanny right now before we let all of you go?

EMMA SEABORN: You'll see us through the window.

EVANGELINE PAYNE: I love you, my darling little girl. Nanny loves you. And then give Rody and give Carl a kiss from nanny, won't ya? Oh, my dear. They're so precious.

[/sc]

CH: That was Evangeline Payne, her granddaughter, Julie Seaborn, and her 7-year-old great granddaughter, Emma, speaking with CBC Corner Brook.

[Music]

Archive: laughing champ

CH: I know you could use a good laugh. So guess what? We're about to give you the best laugh. To remind you that there were once other feelings besides anxiety, we'll be making routine trips to the As It Happens archives. Today, we're going back to 2013 when we spoke with Julie Ostrow, the winner of the first -- and if my research is any indication -- the last American laughing championships. Now, this interview's great because Ms. Ostrow deserved the title. She's got the range. She's got the resonance. And she's got the enthusiasm. But the best thing about this interview is that she goes through her whole laughing repertoire at top volume, surrounded by strangers while she's sitting in a plane waiting to take off. So from our archives, here's Julie Ostrow speaking with Carol on April 8th, 2013.

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CO: Julie, congratulations.

JULIE OSTROW: Thank you so much, Carol.

CO: How did it feel when you won?

JULIE OSTROW: Euphoric. For sure, euphoric. Because I had won after I had actually troubles stopping laughing. I couldn't stop laughing.

CO: How did you win? Tell us how you managed to do it.

JULIE OSTROW: It started with 16 contestants with elimination rounds of like the Alabama knee slapper [gives laugh example]. That's one. And so we did the elimination round. And then eventually I did a face off with someone, the eye contact. Laughter. Mimicking the laughter. And then she and I, one of us was eliminated.

CO: Everyone wants to know, Julie, what does this sound like? What does the international winning laugh sound like?

JULIE OSTROW: [Laughs] In case you're wondering, there are people looking back at me from their plane-seats.

CO: Is everyone laughing?

JULIE OSTROW: Yes, I got some smiles and I got some laughter from 9A. And a little bit of, you know, that guy's still sleeping. That's pretty impressive. Oh, I got a "you better be quiet." But that was a joke because I met Mike earlier. Mike, right?

CO: Who is Mike?

JULIE OSTROW: Mike is in 11A -- we're waiting for the flight.

CO: So you're on a plane. Are there people besides you?

JULIE OSTROW: Oh this is a full flight. I almost didn't get on. [Laughs]

CO: Are you in the middle seat?

JULIE OSTROW: Yeah, of course I'm in the middle seat.

CO: I just want to ask you about some of the other kinds of laughing. I mean, was it a particular kind of laughing you have to do?

JULIE OSTROW: Yes. The first part of the competition was in that elimination round, it was more timed. I would say that Albert Nerenberg, who was the M.C. he indicated when the laugh was done. So we did an evil laugh or, you know, diabolical laugh. Alabama knee slapper. And the snort laugh. So those were elimination rounds. Those were short. And to me, not as real. When I was connecting with the other people and laughing, that's when it triggered that real laugh. And it was -- Bless you Dan -- Dan just sneezed. So then when I was laughing for real and there was no limits on it, my muscle memory, my laughing muscles kicked in. And I couldn't stop -- it was like a reflex in a way.

CO: Even after you won, you still couldn't stop laughing.

JULIE OSTROW: Right. Right. Even when Albert said, I believe we have declared a winner. And I even said, I'm so sorry sorry -- I was laughing through my "I'm so sorry." [Laughs]

CO: Some of the other laughs. Can you give us your best diabolical laugh?

JULIE OSTROW: I will be on the flight for four hours. [Evil laugh]

CO: That sounds evil. [Chuckles]

JULIE OSTROW: And this might be why the plane is emptying. I think it might be why people are getting off the plane, Carol.

CO: Okay. Well, maybe see who leaves if you do your snort laugh.

JULIE OSTROW: [Snort laughs]

CO: Okay. Okay. How about the best multiplex...

JULIE OSTROW: [Laughs]

CO: Julie you are good.

JULIE OSTROW: [Continues laughing]

CO: You have quite a range.

JULIE OSTROW: [Laughs and talks] Thank you. I'm just thinking the people on their cell phones are probably not calling family members, but psychiatrist. [Laughter]

CO: There's also a photo of you, Julie, winning it. There's a big cup or something. Did you get that cup?

JULIE OSTROW: I earned the cup and it's between my legs now on the floo. To describe the height of this, I'm sitting in my seat on the plane and the cup almost reaches my knees.

CO: And that's what you got for winning the American Laughing Championships.

JULIE OSTROW: Absolutely. And I've had a fall. I've been a hoot and a half walking through the airport in San Diego, and people asking me what that was for. Just mentioning that I won this laughing competition that makes people laugh and smile. It's fantastic.

CO: Do your sides ache today?

JULIE OSTROW: Oh, yeah. I'm going to say forget going to that core class at 6:30 on Friday morning. My obliques are in shape now.

CO: All right, Julie, before we let you go, one last -- your favourite laugh. Give it to us.

JULIE OSTROW: Okay. [Laughs]

CO: That's wonderful. Julie, congratulations.

JULIE OSTROW: Thank you so much, Carol.

[/sc]

CH: [Laughs] From our archives, Carol speaking with American Laughing Champion Julie Ostrow in April of 2013 while she was sitting in a packed airplane on the tarmac in San Diego before a flight.

[Music]

[sc]

RICHARD BURR: There's one thing you I can tell you about this, it is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything we have seen in recent years. It's probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.

[/sc]

CH: That was part of a recording of U.S. Senator Richard Burr seeming to warn a group of well-heeled constituents and donors about the coming dangers of the coronavirus. It's one thing that Senator Burr was delivering different messages to different audiences. It's another thing entirely that he reportedly sold up to 1.7 million dollars in stock market investments in mid-February before the economic effects of COVID-19 started walloping the U.S.. Two other Republican senators and one Democrat, Dianne Feinstein, are accused of doing the same. Tim Mak is an investigative correspondent for NPR. We reached him in Washington, D.C..

CO: Tim, you obtained that recording we just heard of Richard Burr talking to this private lunch meeting. Give us a sense of what the message he is giving to his audience.

TIM MAK: It is a very dire assessment about what the coronavirus is going to do to the American economy and to American society. He talks about how serious it is in terms of how quickly it will spread. He talks about the effects it will have on schools, on travel, on business, and on whether the military would even need to be called up for this.

CO: And so at the same time, he is giving this warning that we just heard -- 'There's one thing they can tell you about this is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything we have seen in recent history.' And who is he addressing these remarks to? Who's his audience?

TM: It's a group of well-connected North Carolinians. His constituents. He's the senator from North Carolina. He's at this private luncheon. And he's holding forth in this private social club in Washington, D.C., called the Capitol Hill Club. These are folks who have business interests in North Carolina that these individuals can then go back to their companies and assess, hey, do we need to take these trips to Europe in the next few weeks? Should we be ramping up production? Should we be ramping down production? At that point we are in late February trying to figure out, hey, what is the environment and the outlook going to be in the United States for coronavirus?

CO: So they're getting quite useful intelligence from the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. This is February 27th. The very same day, what is President Donald Trump saying?

TM: Well, the president in and around that time, if you'll remember, was really trying to downplay the prospect of coronavirus taking hold in the United States. He said, quote, "It's like a miracle. It will disappear." That's also the kind of message we were getting from Senator Burr, who said that the United States is very well prepared for a public health crisis. He wasn't saying that in private to though to this audience.

CO: And is the president trying to reassure the American public while at the same time not trying to get a run on the stock market? Can you give any justification for this difference of messages between these two politicians?

TM: I think the president at the time was certainly trying to ramp down fears. But at the same point, that sort of messaging ultimately proved not to be true and left a lot of Americans still prepared to face the weeks of struggle that would come to pass in the United States.

CO: It seems also that Senator Burr is taking his own advice, because we've learned from ProPublica and the Centre for Responsive Politics that Mr. Burr was making some big personal financial moves in mid-February. What can you tell us about changes Mr. Burr made to his stock portfolio?

TM: Well, so as he's putting out public remarks saying that the United States is prepared for a coronavirus health crisis, he was also selling a large percentage of his stock portfolio somewhere between six hundred and twenty thousand dollars and one point seven million dollars worth. And what he dumped was notable -- up to a quarter million dollars worth of shares in two major hospitality chains that have since lost between half and two thirds of their value. And it certainly seems like he was acting to try to minimize his exposure to coronavirus. Now, the big question is whether or not he is relying on publicly available information or whether he was relying on privately available information that's available to him as a senator and as the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

CO: Okay. So what do you know about possible briefings he would have been having up to that point about the epidemic?

TM: Well, it's hard to say because these briefings that he might have gotten as chairman are classified. And it's certainly possible he has inside information in a classified setting. But remember that Senator Burr is someone who's been really deeply enmeshed in issues of public health for 20 years. He's spent a lot of time working on this issue. It wouldn't be a surprise if he had heard other sorts of information just coming through various channels. And the biggest point, I think of the story that we broke here at NPR is that he had this private assessment and he never shared it with the public. Never said, hey, this is my assessment -- that we're going to have school closures, we're going to have travel shutdowns, we're going to perhaps need to activate the military. His views were reserved for the well-connected constituents who happened to be at a luncheon he attended on February 27.

CO: Since your story, we are learning about other politicians in the U.S. who seem to have dumped a lot of stock at the same period time that Mr. Burr did. Stocks that were sensitive or vulnerable to the virus -- and picking up stocks that maybe are, pharmaceutical stocks, that might be advantageous. Are there not rules or disclosure concerns around this? Are they not restricted from actually having made these kinds of transactions?

TM: Well, the rules here on insider trading in Congress are governed by what's called the Stock Act. And the Stock Act basically requires lawmakers to provide public filings of whenever they purchase or sell stocks. That's how we know a lot of this information about Senator Burr. There are laws in place to prevent lawmakers from using their privileged information, which they received as members of Congress to benefit through the stock market. But I have spoken to quite a number of government watchdog groups today. There's a lot of smoke here. I can't determine without a subpoena, without an investigation by the proper investigative bodies, what's the information Senator Burr was relying on when he made those decisions. That would require a deeper investigation.

CO: All right, Tim, we'll be following your coverage on this. Thanks for speaking with us.

TM: Thank you so much.

CH: Tim Mak is an investigative correspondent for NPR. We reached him in Washington, D.C..

[Music]

Periodic table dress

Guest: Trish Tacoma

CH: When Deena Hinshaw is on TV, people watch closely. Dr. Hinshaw is Alberta's Chief Medical Officer of Health. And all week she's been giving updates to the public about the coronavirus outbreak. Her appearances are sobering and informative. But for B.C. fashion designer Trish Tacoma, one appearance was surprisingly uplifting because after Dr. Hinshaw's press conference on Tuesday, Ms. Tacoma started getting a lot of messages. And now she's working hard to keep up with a lot of online orders. Trish Tacoma is the owner of the clothing brand Smoking Lily. We reached her in Victoria, British Columbia.

CO: Trish what are you getting a lot of orders for right now?

TRISH TACOMA: We're getting a lot of orders for a periodic table dress that Deena Hinshaw was wearing -- who is the Alberta Chief Medical Officer.

CO: Did you know that she had worn the dress on TV before you started getting all these orders?

TT: Yeah. A customer had sent us a screenshot of it and said, hey, I just saw your dress online. And that sort of blew up. It was like, you know, one after the other. [Chuckles] Pretty good.

CO: Now, what is it about this dress that has such a big appeal?

TT: Well, it's a really flattering style. It's really like a nice form fitting dress. But it's made out of cotton French Terry. So it's like wearing your pajamas almost. It's so comfortable. But then it is printed with the periodic table and it's just so eye-catching.

CO: Do you know if Dr. Hinshaw is a fan of your label? Does she wear your dresses?

TT: I think she's worn about four or five different Smoking Lily items over the last week or so.

CO: And did she notify you this before so you could get production ramped up? [Laughs]

TT: I don't think she had that on the forefront of her mind. [Chuckles] She has been a longtime customer of ours, but we've only known her as Deena Hinshaw, not Deena Hinshaw Chief Medical Officer.

CO: Who's on TV all the time.

TT: Oh, yeah.

CO: And now, of course, what is on her mind, I'm sure is science. And do you think that is why this particular, the periodic table of elements might appeal to her?

TT: Yes, for sure. I think a lot of our customers are science teachers and professors and doctors.

CO: But I understand this particular design was something that you really weren't selling much anymore.

TT: No, that's true. But it's the dress we've been doing for the last seven years and we do it off and on. And it was actually one of our off periods that we weren't doing it. So this year just sort of brought all this interest. We figured that we could make hundred. And we put them online on Wednesday afternoon and by Thursday morning they had sold out completely.

CO: Are you ready for this kind of production? Because lots of other places have stopped with their workforces. Were you ready to start doing this kind of dress making?

TT: On Monday morning, we shut down both our retail locations. We have one here in Victoria and one in Vancouver. And then by the end of the day, I had decided to shut down our production facility completely and just keep open our mail order room. So everybody is home right now. So we're just going to figure this out because we figured that the printer can print the fabric. She can do that in isolation. Nobody else has to be here while she does that. And then we have a cutter coming in and she'll do that part of the production by herself. And then we have two home sellers that have the equipment at home to do it. So every step of the production can be done in isolation.

CO: Right. But had you told those women that you were suspending production before all this began?

TT: I told everybody that they could go home. And I was paying them out till the end of the week. And we're just going to figure out what's happening.

CO: And now what's happening is that you're...[chuckles].

TT: [Chuckles] By the way, we've got some work for you.

CO: Well, that must've been a nice turn.

TT: Yeah, it is. Yeah. And we decided take a percentage of the money, of this dress that we brought in, we're giving it to the local food bank because they're having a lot of need there right now. So we are giving back to the community. It's not going to happen fast because everybody's working in isolation. It's going to take a bit longer for our production.

CO: But this story is still making the rounds, so you might be giving a lot more orders.

TT: We have as of fifteen minutes ago, we had 375 people on the waiting list.

CO: Okay. You're going to be busy.

TT: [Laughs] I think so, but we're taking it one step at a time. We're going to do this hundred dresses and ship them out. And just to make sure that we can do this all safely, because that's the most important thing, is to be able to do it safely.

CO: What would you say that Deena Hinshaw at this point?

TT: Deena Hensler, thank you very much. [Chuckles]

CO: Okay Trish, best of luck. Thanks for speaking with us.

TT: Thank you. Thank you very much.

CH: Trish Tacoma is a fashion designer and owner of the clothing brand Smoking Lily. We reached her in Victoria, British Columbia.

[Music]

Boo the bear

CH: Human beings may be hunkering down indoors, emerging as rarely as possible. But for animals who've spent the winter self isolating, it's time to get up, get out, and get moving. Animals like Boo. He's a grizzly bear who lives at the Grizzly Bear Refuge in Golden B.C.'s Kicking Horse Mountain Resort. Yesterday, Boo woke up to the delight of manager Nicole Gangnon. She took a video of the moment he emerged from his snowy winter den. And it's our Sound of the Day. [.

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NICOLE GANGNON: Hi. Eight years it took me to catch this moment. Yeah! [Laughs in excitement] Hello. Oh my big boy! Momma is so proud of you. You are such a good site.

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CH: That was Grizzly Bear Refuge manager Nicole Gangnon reacting to Boo the bear waking up from his hibernation.

[Music]

Stair climbing fundraiser

Guest: Patrick Swadden

CH: It's not easy to fundraise when everyone's in isolation. But the charitable causes that demand donations have not gone away. And neither has Patrick Swadden's resolve to meet them. And so the Ryerson University journalism student is spending today climbing the stairs of his 42-storey Toronto apartment building 55 times over to raise money for Partners in Health. We reached Patrick Swadden during his hard earned lunch break.

CO: Patrick, how are you feeling right now?

PATRICK SWADDEN: I'm a little tired, but I think I've got the energy to get through this.

CO: How many flights -- how many times have you done your building so far?

PS: So, so far I've done 24 ascents of my building. So I've got 31 to go. So I'm just a little under halfway -- a little slightly behind schedule. But will definitely get this done today.

CO: And just why exactly 55 times of a 42 storey building?

PS: Well so actually my building's got 43 kind of occupied stories. But from the first floor up to the 43 floor which is the last occupied one is 42 stories. And that's about 112 metres. And if you times that by 55 ascents that is just a little under 6200 metres which is the height of Mount Denali in Alaska -- and that's North America's highest peak. So I thought okay I think I timed it out and did some test runs the other day and I thought I think I could do this in one day. And I thought it might be an inspiring way to raise some money for a good cause. So that's kind of how I take that.

CO: Now, did you aspire to climb Alaska's Mount Denali?

PS: I've got to be honest with you, before a few days ago, I didn't know anything about Mount Denali. And I just found out that it was North America's highest peak. And I thought I could do that in one day just in my apartment stairwell. So that's how I picked it.

CO: Okay. I'm trying to figure this out. So 6200 metres is Mount Denali. You're doing that in flights. But you're going down as well, right?

PS: I am going down. So I'm doing this in blocks of 5 ascents so that I can kind of take a little break, drink some water, have some trail mix or a gel, recharge my phone a bit. And each time I go down to start a block of five ascents, I'll take the elevator. But in between each ascent, I go down, I go down the stairs as well.

CO: Some people say going downstairs -- well it is a different set of muscles. Just as hard perhaps as going up?

PS: Yeah. I was worried that that would be the case. But in actual fact, it's been one of the easier parts of the day. I mean, aside from, you know, taking a break in between each block of ascents. But it hasn't been too bad. I think I'll be able to get through it.

CO: And you're not dealing with altitude sickness or lack of oxygen as you get to the top?

PS: Luckily the highest I've been at any point today is 120 metres above ground. So it's not like a few years ago, my mom, my stepdad and I hiked in Peru, the Inca trail. And boy, did we ever deal with some, you know, lack of oxygen during parts of that trail. So that was really tough. This isn't so bad.

CO: But the other thing is, is when you're climbing a mountain or doing the trail like that, it's really cool because you're looking at great scenery and you're out in the fresh air. Okay. You're in the stairwell. [Laughs] What are you doing to visually amuse yourself?

PS: Well, actually, I'm finding lots of ways to amuse myself. So a lot of people have donated -- and just as a way to maybe inject some humor into this fundraiser, I said to people, like if you have a condition for the release of your donation, make it known to me and I'll do my best. So, you know, for example, my friend Kyle asked that I sing the Magical Mr. Mistoffelees on my way up. I sang Happy Birthday to my girlfriend just on a recent ascent. I think a peer of mine in my journalism school wants me to do Climb Every Mountain from The Sound of Music. I'm going to be doing "Baby got back." Dancing M.C. Hammer. And the donations are still coming in. So there's lots left to do.

CO: What's the charity you're raising money for?

PS: So the charity I'm raising money for is called Partners in Health Canada. And really, I just wanted to support something that would be, you know, giving to the healthcare industry. And they are just doing incredible work. You know, they really believe that healthcare is a human right. And they believe in the idea that, you know, we should all have access to health care. And, you know, especially in times, difficult times like these, that's not always the case. I think a lot of marginalized populations have a more difficult time getting access to health care. And I wanted to support something to help people on the frontlines, because this is a difficult time for our health care industry.

CO: How are you keeping your social distancing as you're doing this? Are there other people in the stairwell?

PS: Well, that's a good question. And so far today, I have only passed one person. And the reason I picked the stairs is just because, like, I've lived in this building for six months and I have not passed more than two people. I was a little worried about the idea of social distancing. But I thought, you know, like I've just never really run into anyone. I feel like this would have less of an impact than going outside and going for a run, for example. But yeah, I'm going to make sure that I go Lysol wipe everything down once I'm finished. But I have been social distancing for about a week before I started this. I haven't really been in contact with anyone really, because all of my classes are online now and I've just been kind of in my apartment for the last seven days.

CO: Well, I know that we're cutting into your stairwell time, so we're going to let you go and get back out there. And good luck.

PS: Thanks for having me on your show. Take care.

CH: Patrick Swadden is a student in Toronto who spent today climbing 2310 flights of stairs for charity -- or the same 42 flights 55 times. To see the proof for yourself go to your website: cbc.ca/aih.

[Music]

Part 3: Encore: Omar El Akkad

Encore: Omar El Akkad

CH: On last night's program, we assembled a special panel of pandemic experts. Carol spoke with authors Margaret Atwood, Waubgeshig Rice, and Daniel Kalla -- who've all spilled plenty of ink on the subject, exploring dystopian and apocalyptic themes in their novels. During the discussion, they shared their own recommendations of books to turn to during these trying times. And one of the titles that came up was American War by Omar El Akkad. Mr. El Akkad has covered various conflicts as a war reporter for The Globe and Mail. He's also served as the Globe correspondent for the Western United States, which surprise is where American War is set. The book depicts an all too foreseeable future late in the 21st century. The second American civil war has ravaged the U.S., as have climate change and a terrible plague. People have been made refugees in their own country. In 2017, Omar El Akkad joined Carol in the As It Happens studio to discuss American War. Here's an encore presentation of that conversation.

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CO: Omar, welcome to As It Happens.

OEA: Thank you for having me.

CO: This is a remarkable book, I mean what an act of the imagination to try and set the stage for the United States in 2074, where this is the earliest date — it goes on from there. Just can you describe the America of your book?

OEA: Yeah, I mean it's less an act of imagination than an act of outright thievery I think. I basically took these conflicts that have sort of defined the world in my lifetime — many of which the U.S. has been involved in either indirectly or from a great distance. And I recast them as something immediate and something very close to home. That was the central conceit of the book. And so the United States of this novel is a country fractured by civil war, in which many different factions based on all kinds of lines you know religious, national, ethnicity, whatever, are fighting each other. That's not a rare thing in other parts of the world. I just took it and sort of recast it in this part of the world.

CO: And what has brought civil war to the United States?

OEA: So the United States is a much different country now. The coasts have been eaten up by rising sea levels. There has been a great inland exodus. All the coastal cities have drowned. Florida doesn't exist anymore. What brings civil war is a federal prohibition on fossil fuels, which, obviously, comes far too late. Nonetheless, a bunch of southern states decide to secede rather than go along with the prohibition, and that is the primary cause of the war.

CO: The premise is that they want to hold onto the industry — the fossil fuels business — and all the benefits that come with that. They refuse to go along with this prohibition on fossil fuels?

OEA: That is the surface level premise, but really it's no different from the causes of the previous civil war in the sense that it's mostly about this is the way we do things and we don't care how ruinous it is, we're going to continue to do. So in a sense it has to do with pride.

CO: You make references to other countries in the world — all of which are affected by climate change and extreme heat in many places. But the Middle East has become an Empire. China has tremendous strength. Can you describe the world outside the United States in 2074 in your book?

OEA: Yeah, so the biggest change is that there is now a new empire — it's called the Bouazizi Empire — and it's my hopelessly optimistic vision for the Middle East, in which after a number of Arab Spring-type revolutions, they finally get it to work. But on another level, it's essentially the story of how the United States came to be: a group of people from that vary regionally, that vary by culture come together to fight against what they see as tyrannical rule. They succeed, and from a number of different states create one.

CO: And the Bouazizi Empire what is its relationship with the United States?

OEA: Partially saboteur. So they're a rising empire, and it's in their best interest to see other empires fail. And so a large part of the thinking around it I was looking to situations such as how the United States behaved in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion, which was a sense of what can we do to prolong this conflict and hurt the rival empire? That was the basis for it.

CO: And so much of this story — of “American War”, as the novel is called — so much of it is about turning the tables and showing the United States on the other side of things — facing the things that other regions faced when the United States was supreme, which, of course, it's not at this point. We meet Sarat Chestnut, she’s the main protagonist in the story — just an extraordinary young girl. And she is a child living with her family in what's left of Louisiana at the beginning of it. Can you just tell us a bit about Sarat?

OEA: Yeah, in my mind it's her story. I mean the book has gotten a lot of attention, and it's got a lot of sort of “bang, bang” aspects to it. There's drones in the sky, there's civil war, there's climate change, but really it's her story. She's the only character who came to me fully-formed. She is in my mind defined mostly by the idea that she is stubbornly curious. She's defiantly curious. She wants to learn about the world around her. And the central tragedy of the book in my mind is how those qualities are turned against her by the war and by people who would exploit her for their own aims.

CO: Well, be careful not to give too much away because there is real danger of spoiler effects here. But just tell us a bit about the family — the Chestnut family — and the war is coming closer and closer to them; they have to flee. What happens?

OEA: So the Chestnuts at the beginning of the story are living in a repurposed shipping container by the base of the Mississippi Sea, which was what used to be the Mississippi River down in southernmost Louisiana. And then the war essentially comes to their doorstep, and they're forced to flee. They are forced into a refugee camp in the heart of the South — in the heart of the war-torn southern country — and that's where Sarat comes of age, and that's where she begins to see the wider world, and begins to be shaped by it.

CO: And this is of all the examples — all the episodes of turning the tables in this novel — the idea that there should be a refugee camp of this size and nature in the middle of the United States for people fleeing war. And the camp is, as you describe it, so much like camps one would encounter in other parts of the world where they are the victims of war and not the United States. How did you come to understand the functioning of a refugee camp?

OEA: So the thinking behind Camp Patience had a lot to do with the idea the central idea of the book being that revenge is universal, and suffering is universal. There's no foreign way of suffering. And so when I came to build that kind of war-torn world in the United States, it almost didn't matter that it was in the United States. That camp would look the same in anywhere that was on the losing end of a war. Many of the sort of physical features of it I took from areas that I studied, or either researched or was in camps in Afghanistan. The layout of the tents is based on certain encampments. But really, there was nothing specific to it being in the United States.

CO: But you having been in refugee camps, and I identify with the experience of it because I can recall the first time I ever went to a refugee camp in Pakistan. It was for Afghans, and I passed out. Just the sheer overwhelming sense of the place just overwhelmed me, and I think that happens when you go to a place like that, and how it's a place for people to seek shelter and to remain human. But, at the same time, it breaks down humanity, doesn't it?

OEA: It does, absolutely. And there's a sense too of being on the losing end of a war being somewhat similar to moving backwards in time. I mean those places in Afghanistan, if you look at photos of Kabul from 50-60 years ago it looks like a more modern country. It looks like it has moved backwards. And so I wanted to bring that sense to the refugee camp in the south. The novel set 50 years in the future, but there's very little advanced technology; nobody's walking around with smartphones and that sort of thing. And so I wanted to get that sense of moving backwards in time, which is what I get whenever I'm in a situation where I get up close with the population that has been on the receiving end of the sort of things that you and I have the privilege to look at from great distance.

CO: And what effect does life in Camp Patients — in this refugee camp — what effect does it have on Sarat?

OEA: She comes to find a mentor — a man named Albert Gaines — who shows up and starts teaching her about the wider world. When she first arrives in Camp Patience, she's not aware of anything really beyond her immediate surroundings. And he starts to teach her about the war, and about her country, and what's left of her country, and not everything he tells her is true. And what begins essentially in earnest is the process of radicalizing her. So we meet this young girl. By the time she's in Camp Patience, she's sort of 12-13 years old. And she knows enough to want to know, but she doesn't know enough to know whether it's true what's being told to her. And what culminates in all of this is essentially a massacre at Camp Patience. And this is not too much of a spoiler; this happens fairly early in the book, but so there's a combination of the things that this man is teaching her to prime her to become the kind of person who could become a weapon, and also the things the outside world does to her. And the combination of those two things essentially takes her central trait and turns it against her.

CO: And then finally, this horrible massacre that she witnesses when she loses loved ones is the penultimate act against that intelligence — that child that's in there. And the child is actually extinguished in the course of that, is she not?

OEA: Um hum. Yeah, when I started writing the story, I knew Sarat. I knew her beginning, and I knew her end, so I had the arc. And I knew what she was going to become, and what interested me the most, what I really wanted to do was not create a fundamentally good or evil character. I didn't want you to sympathize with her at the end. I just wanted you to understand how she got to the place where she is.

CO: I'm speaking with Omar El Akkad here at As It Happens in our studio about his novel, “American War”, which has events that happen at the end of this century. And you were born in Cairo, raised in Doha, educated in Canada, and now you are in the United States. You worked as a Globe and Mail reporter, and also covered the U.S. for the Globe for a while. But all of these experiences — when you come from all of these different ways of seeing the world — what does that bring to your moment when you sort of try to imagine the United States, which is not your home country. How do you see it in a way that perhaps Americans can't see it? Or anybody can't see their own country?

OEA: What it brought to me was a sense of symmetry. I bring up this story a lot: in my in my journalism career, I've only been tear-gassed twice. Once when I was covering the Arab Spring revolution in Cairo, and the other time when I was covering the Black Lives Matters protests in Ferguson, Missouri. And so if I bring anything to the story in terms of my personal experience, it’s finding those moments of symmetry. When I was in the south, I would constantly meet the sort of people who are incredibly hospitable, who would give you the shirt off their back, but are also tied to some deeply held cultural beliefs and traditions — some of them great, some of them terrible. And God help you if you challenge them on any of it. And it reminded me of the people I grew up with in the Middle East. Those were the exact same traits. And so if I brought anything to this it was just the sense that we're not that different. We're not fundamentally different.

CO: What effect did it have on you watching what's happened with the election of Donald Trump as the president?

OEA: It's been surreal. I finished the book in the summer of 2015, a couple of weeks before Donald Trump announced he was running for president. And since that time, the early reviews of the book tend to use words like “timely”, or this is a “cautionary tale” for where we might go. And I would love to take credit for all of that. But in truth, I never saw any of this coming. And if you told me when I finish this book that we'd be sitting right now talking about President Donald Trump, I mean we have the memory of goldfish, and we tend to normalize things very quickly, but that's not a sentence that I'm still comfortable saying. Everything about what has happened has seemed more fictional than most of the fiction I've read.

CO: At the same time, your fiction — the story that you write about all the things that some might have said if they'd read the book a year ago it seems improbable — is there is a foundation now in the United States that can lead more probably to you or your fiction?

OEA: I wanted to write a story about how evil begets evil. And as much as it might help book sales, or as much as it might make me seem smarter than I am, I never wanted to live in the kind of world that would try testing that theorem so blatantly. I mean we do live in an environment where the ideas of cruelty and of destroying violence with even greater violence seem to be having this renaissance. And that's terrifying to me as a human being. Forget novelist or fiction, that's just terrifying to me from a human standpoint. There's a line in the book about how the universal slogan of war is something along the lines of if it had been you, you'd have done the same. And so the central point that I try to make with the book is this notion that what allows us to believe that people far away suffer in a different way is only the privilege of not being in that situation. And if it had been us, we'd do the same. That's what I hope the central takeaway of the book is.

CO: The central take away from me in many ways is just that of all the things that can befall a society — all the horrors that one can live — war is the most destructive. And as you just said earlier, it's a unifier. It's the same feeling you had — the same reaction you have no matter where you are. If your village or your city is being bombed, or you are driven into refugee camp, or you are seeing your family destroyed, it's completely the same experience to everybody. There is no more horrible thing to go through than war. And if you want to add to that, that’s my sense of the most effective part of the story.

OEA: I'm glad to hear that. It was what I had hoped for. It was to get at that sense. As much as it could be taken as a sci-fi, or speculative fiction, or you know the fact that it's set in the future, a lot of that was window dressing for the story of the single human being, and how someone so loving and curious and engaged with the world could be taken and made into this human weapon.

CO: There are a lot of ways in which the premise of the war — how civil war comes back to the United States 50 years from now — a lot of ways it could have happened. Why did you decide that energy and climate change would be the decisive factor?

OEA: A couple of reasons: almost everything in the book lives as some sort of analogy. And so when I was looking for an analogy to the causes of the first civil war I knew I couldn't find anything with the sheer scale of human cruelty as the cause of the first civil war. Meaning the enslavement of an entire population — the sheer human cruelty of that I wasn't going to find an analogue for. But as something that everybody is going to have no trouble saying they would have stood up against later on when it's safe to do so, the idea of fossil fuel use seemed like a good analogue. The idea that many, many years from now, when we have better ways of doing this, better ways of producing energy, better ways of living our lives, it's going to be very easy to stand up and say in hindsight, I can't believe they didn't realize how ruinous what they were doing is! And if it was me back then, I would have stood up. When, in fact, it would have been very, very difficult because this wasn't some aberration — this was the fuel for the largest commercial empire on earth. And so that was the thinking behind using fossil fuels as the cause for the civil war: just this idea that something we rely on and we don't care how ruinous it is because it moves things along.

CO: And you also want to take us into other parts of the world where climate change is affecting people. How difficult was it to imagine what the world would look like under the kind of conditions that the United States is suffering — how other countries would be experiencing climate change?

OEA: It was difficult, and it was part of the research that was very esoteric because you would go look at climate research reports. I remember being in southern Florida and talking to a climate scientist who has been ringing the alarm bells on this for 30 years. And he would talk about how he would go into communities, and he would give presentations where he would show them a picture of their neighbourhood, and what it would look like under a metre of sea level rise or two metres. And inevitably at the end of every one of these presentations, somebody would come along and point to a spot on the map and say oh look, my house is OK; it's on a hill! And he would say well, what about the infrastructure? You're just sitting on a hill in the middle. And so it informed the idea that people have a hard time looking beyond you know 30 years a mortgage in terms of time, and looking beyond the boundaries of their property. But in some places it was really easy to imagine 0what the Middle East would look like under climate change. It would be even hotter, and it would be borderline unlivable. And that was part of it.

CO: You are of Middle Eastern descent. Your experiences from Middle East, you studied there you, you grew up there, you know that place, you are now living in the United States. How does it affect you that you're living in a country where things can actually be said like people from certain countries should be banned from coming here, or they should be should be registered — Muslims should be registered — these are things that have been said in the past six months. What effect does that have on you?

OEA: It's depressing in its symmetry and its relationship to the sort of places that I left. To anyone who grew up in the Middle East, the idea of the big, strong man coming and saying that he's going to do the bad things to the bad people is awfully familiar. And so when someone gets elected on that premise, anybody who grew up in the Middle East knows full well that the next stage is finding out that his definition of the bad people is much more broad than you might have thought. And so when I see the sort of symmetry to the places that I left, precisely for those reasons, it's disheartening and I hope it doesn't lead to the sort of conclusions that I saw in the part of the world where I grew up.

CO: But you also saw things like Guantanamo Bay, and the detention of people from many countries without rights, without trials, without any recourse. You saw and know about how they were treated and the torture that they experienced, and you bring that to this book. But it's happens to Americans. And without giving away details, we need to talk about Sarat and her final radicalization. What finally takes her to the place where she can actually become a weapon?

OEA: She is sent to a detention camp called Sugarloaf, and the chapter that takes place in Sugarloaf is the least dressed-up chapter in the book. All the other analogies I try to couch or change a little bit. But it's hard to read that chapter and not know exactly what I'm referencing. And essentially, she is broken down to the point where she becomes what her captors need her to be. And that to me is the sort of final breaking point for her. In places like Guantanamo Bay, any time you create the kind of environment where you treat people monstrously you need them to be monsters — because somebody in the equation is a monster. And so she becomes what they need her to be.

CO: Is there any coming back from that? Any other way that a human can experience that without becoming radicalized?

OEA: I would imagine we all have entirely different tolerances for how much damage we can take before we become the sort of people who inflict that damage. And I would imagine it differs greatly from human being to human being. I see optimism as a kind of necessary thing, which anyone who reads my book might disagree. But I do see optimism as a necessity of life, and so I'm inclined to believe that there's always a coming back, but it requires kindness that is of the same magnitude as the cruelty I think.

CO: Because if this is in some respects a cautionary tale of where things can go, how do we avoid it? How can it be prevented — what happens ultimately in your book and in fifty years from now, and over a course of all these changes. How could it be stopped?

OEA: We can start by talking about it. We can start by assuming that the people who are on the receiving end of the sort of damage are not different from us. We can pretend the victims of this sort of world are not fundamentally foreign people — that there is no such thing as foreign people when it comes to this sort of thing. I think it's always an indicator that the world is in a very bad place whenever anyone turns to a novelist for answers. So I will leave my answers at that. But I think the first thing that you can do is not think of the victims of the world we've created as being fundamentally foreign.

CO: What do you want people to take away from this, to think, to feel? What would you ideally like the effect of this novel to be on people?

OEA: The caveat is that I subscribe to the notion that once the book leaves your hand it doesn't matter what you think of it. And that the author's opinion is not all that important. But I hope they read an anti-war book. I hope they read a book that is a defense of nuance, and a rejection of this sort of you is either with us or against us world. But most of all I hope that they read it as the story of Sarat Chestnut, which is in my mind, what it is above all else.

CO: Omar El Akkad, I thank you very much for speaking with us, for this novel, “American War”, and I wish you well.

OEA: Thank you so much.

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CH: From 2017, that was an encore presentation of Carol's conversation with award-winning journalist Omar El Akkad about his first novel, American War, published by Alfred A. Knopf.

March 20, 2020 Episode Transcript

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